Better Farming Wiki
A wiki for anyone who wants to use gold farming for development Click 'Edit' to build Dreams *Anyone on the planet can support themselves by offering products and services in virtual worlds *Virtual workers and customers have better options Obstacles *Most people who work in virtual worlds are currently too poor to own a computer *Many are required to work long hours, in poor conditions, and keep 40% of the sale-value of their work (see the Guardian, NPR and the NY Times). A plan *Build free gold farming studios worldwide, where computers and games are given as public infrastructure, so people can work in online games autonomously in better conditions *Build an open and free virtual work exchange where gamers can connect directly with farmers to exchange virtual work on their own terms. *Build a user-generated metaverse so that anyone can create virtual worlds where others can play and work Background *Around 400 000 people globally earn their living working in massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft *Mostly they collect in-game currency (known as gold farming) or build high-level characters (known as power leveling) which are then sold to other players (more information here and an infographic here) *The global market for this industry was valued at over $3bn annually by a study from within the World Bank. *Gold farming has been featured on the NY Times, the BBC, and the Economist. A Problem *To keep the cost of gold low, the industry typically employs very poor people in developing countries. Goldfarmers by population are Chinese, Vietnamese, and Mexican. *Most of these people are required to work long hours, often in poor conditions, and usually a superior takes a cut of their earnings (see the Guardian NPR and the NY Times). The Potential ''' *The development potential of gold farming has been discussed by The World Bank, Cory Doctorow, and Richard Heeks, among others. *The money involved is small enough to flow easily from wealthy players, and large enough to make a difference to the people doing the work. '''A Movement *Work together to create better options for both players and farmers. *Use a model developed by the ethical outsourcing company Samasource: :: 1. Build gold farming studios where workers have autonomy and can all lead themselves: :: A place where the computers and bandwidth are donated or self-supplied. Farmers are able to work here for free. They do not need a superior who is taking a cut. A guild forms of these farmers all over the world and they try to serve the interests of players better. For this part of the mission we're going to raise a few thousand dollars on kickstarter. :: 2. Build a portal that connects these farmers directly to buyers: :: This will be a website where farmers can sell their goods and services directly to buyers without commission – they can charge their own price and keep it all. For buyers, this will be a place to purchase gold and services that is humane and non-exploitative. We hope that the gold sold here could be quite cheap, as farmers currently receive only around 40% of the revenue from their work: they could pay themselves more while charging less. This website would support itself with advertisements. More about the project and wiki What kind of management and structure will this project have? *As open as possible - we would like as many people as possible to help, and share in the rewards of their contribution. *We are going to look at some kind of model where contributions can be rewarded with a stake in the benefits - gold, advertising revenue. *We want to be accountable - if something goes wrong, or someone is unhappy, they can take measures in the real world to let us know. People should have all the normal means to interact with us including legal. {C}How is the project going to fund itself? *For the centre, we will need some external funding. We will launch a kickstarter campaign later this year. *For the website, we’re looking at various funding models. One would be to partner with other companies and run advertisements. Another would be to offer a kind of freemium service. At the moment we are applying for a government grant of a few thousand dollars to support the initial stages. {C}Where do you see this going? We hope this is the first step to: *helping anyone anywhere on the planet to earn an income in online communities if they want *increasing the freedom and choices available to virtual workers. *creaing a user-generated metaverse {C}How can I get involved? *Click 'Edit' and add your thoughts. *Email bettergoldfarming@gmail.com *Contact us on Twitter Latest activity Category:Browse